An extremist, not a fanatic

February 14, 2014

Love & class

Simon May in the FT says that romantic love helps to fulfill "the ambition to subvert traditional relations of class, power and more recently gender."

Traditionally, he's been right. From Cinderella to Rosie M Banks, a staple of fiction has been how love can conquer class divides.

But no more. Love now helps reinforce the class divide. As Jeremy Greenwood and colleagues point out, the rise of assortative mating - the rich marrying the rich - has been a significant cause of increased inequality.

Assortative mating can also perpetuate inequality through the generations - partly because the child of rich parents is more likely to marry someone rich, but also because being born into a family with two wealthy, educated parents might increase one's chances of doing well in life, because educated mothers make for educated children.

However, assortative mating hasn't increased because of a conspiracy among the rich. Instead, I suspect, one big cause has been job polarization. In the 60s and 70s, men commonly married secretaries or someone from the typing pool. Today, these opportunities have vanished with the decline of secretaries and typing pools. In this sense, assortative mating has increased because it's the only game in town - a fact reinforced by the increased economic status of women since the 60s.

This helps explain another trend since the 70s - for marriage rates, here (pdf) and in the US, to decline. As Sam Pizzigati says, "social interactions across income levels have become considerably rarer" - which reduces one's chances of meeting "the one."

I say all this for two reasons. First, what we have here is an example of Marx's dictum: "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life." As the mode of production changed to eliminate secretaries and typing pools, so cross-class marriages have declined, and with them marriage rates overall.

Secondly, class divisions can perpetuate themselves not only by generating ideologies which sustain inequality, but also by generating practices such as assortative mating which themselves contribute to inequality.

1. "social interactions across income levels have become considerably rarer". Aside from Sam Pizzigati, which hardly counts as an oracle, you have no empirical evidence for this claim.

2. "First, what we have here is an example of Marx's dictum". Which is so general as to be non-falsifiable. If any change in mode of production doesn't not condition any [ill-defined] social processes, would you admit that this statement has been disproven? Hardly.

3. "Secondly, class divisions can perpetuate themselves not only by generating ideologies which sustain inequality, but also by generating practices such as assortative mating which themselves contribute to inequality."

Which is which? You seem to want to have it both ways. Not that they are incompatible; just that it's unlikely that they are of the same magnitude. The latter one would be accepted (actually, it *is* accepted) from anathema-worthy libertarians like C.Murphy. Since we are on the topic, assortative mating as cause for inequality, together with returns on skill and globalization, are explanations for inequality of the Right, usually belittled by the Left (not that I consider you a conventional leftist). But it seems that, after IQ heritability is also accepted as one factor of inequality, the intellectual debate on inequality will be settled on terms that allow for little policy intervention along traditional progressive lines.

How many of these secretaries were doctors and lawyers daughters who worked there to meet doctors and lawyers? How many were hired because they were doctors and lawyers daughters? After all, after marriage they were expected to fit in socially.
How many had gone to Radcliffe to meet Harvard men, dropping out and then receiving the (in)famous Ph.T (put husband through diploma)? Yep,a real graduation ceremony in the '50's

The tendency of like to marry like is well established, based on physical attributes, religious beliefs, language, cultural background, social status, etc, etc.

So much, so obvious. Or, as my old Granny used to say, when it comes to marriage everyone reverts to type.

The Greenwood paper only considers the narrow issue of educational attainment, and on the basis that there's been an observeable increase in the likelihood of partnership between individuals of similar education proficiency it concludes that there's been an increase in assortative mating.

Well, as this blog has so often argued, extrapolating from the particular to the general is a non-starter. Greenwood's conclusions are, frankly, silly.

I confess that I have some doubts about these
studies showing an increase in assortative mating. Why? Because they go largely against the "pop culture" perception - at least in fiction (novels, movies, etc.), social taboos against inter-class marriage (specially against women marrying "down") seem to be much more strong some decades ago than today, meaning that probably in the past these relationships were more rare (and, then, more prone to create 'scandal' when they occurred).

But perhaps the changes in reality and in "pop culture" are about different things: possibly what was a taboo in the past was "upper class woman + lower class man" marriages, when what is becoming rare in the present are "upper class man + lower class woman".

Or perhaps in the past things like education or even job are a bad proxy for the social class of a woman, meaning that, today "upper class man + upper class woman" marriage are more easy to detect in statistical studies (if both working class girls and upper class girls don't go to college, you can't really differentiate the two in these studies)

The typing pool trope is a red herring (cunningly teed-up by the reference to Rosie M Banks). "In the 60s and 70s, men commonly married secretaries or someone from the typing pool". I suggest that "commonly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You could as easily claim that assortative mating has declined due to the disapearance of Young Conservative dances.

Similarly, Miquel's suggestion that "upper class man + lower class woman" has become rare, rather ignores the fact that this has always been statistically rare. The dull reality is that the tendency of the middle classes to marry each other has been reinforced by the growth in tertiary education and the increase in female workforce participation.

In other words, increasing class rigidity ("lower social mobility" in the popular parlance) is the paradoxical product of "progressive" developments, which was something that Marx predicted (the critique of Marx by later social scientists on this score, such as Weber and Dahrendorf, looks increasingly naive).